Existing aerial defense systems are poorly suited for defending against invasive low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as commercially-available UAVs, which can be used to carry improvised weapons and/or surveillance systems. For example, traditional defense systems against rockets, artillery, and mortars typically involve anti-aircraft missiles or guns (e.g., the Phalanx close-in weapon system, CWIS). Such systems, however, are often impractical and cost-prohibitive due to their relative expensive compared to the potential harm caused by an aerial threat. Other defense systems solutions use tube-launched small unmanned aerial systems (UASs). These tube-launches systems, however, are slower and/or less maneuverable due to, inter alia, their necessity to fit inside a tube. That is, the sizing requirements result in design sacrifices (e.g., removal of certain control surfaces).
As can be appreciated, to mitigate asymmetric attack, aerial defense systems should employ defensive vehicles/aircraft that are comparable to the cost of a given target aircraft or objects (e.g., an invasive attacking vehicle). The aerial defense systems should be further configured to defend against large numbers of target aircraft, while using defensive aircraft that are sufficiently fast and maneuverable to intercept and/or to otherwise incapacitate the target aircraft. To track a target aircraft, existing anti-aircraft systems use sensors mounted to gimbals and/or turrets. While these anti-aircraft systems are suitable for target aircraft situated at a distance, they are not suitable for proximate (i.e., nearby), fast moving, objects/aircraft. Therefore, the aerial defense system should employ an imaging system and method to track, image, and target proximate target aircraft during flight.
To provide remote control, monitoring, and/or testing of the aerial defense system and its defensive aircraft, the aerial defense system may further employ a virtual reality system to generate an aerial simulation environment. Through the aerial simulation environment, improved autonomy may be developed and evaluated at reduced costs by, inter alia, decreasing the number of experimental flight hours, reducing technical risks associated with flight vehicle accidents, and improving the timeliness and thoroughness of test and evaluation outcomes by enabling the use of simulations to model the probability of different outcomes and flight-based verification of the algorithmic robustness against all possible scenarios.
In view of the forgoing, a need exists for an improved anti-aircraft system. A need also exists for an anti-aircraft system configured to guard against large numbers of invasive vehicles. In addition, there is a need for a virtual or augmented reality system to generate an aerial simulation environment using, for example, both real world input and simulated input.